Lady Bug Hotel

My soon to be Mama in law gave us her father’s bird house that he made for her many many years ago and I just new I had to fix it up a little to put it out. But then- the Magic Pintrest showed me this new thing you can make called a Lady Bug Hotel! Mama to be has given us sooo much Milkweed seeds to grow and attract butterflies that lady bugs will be a constant need because of the pesky affids.

So I off to make myself a Lady Bug Hotel I went!

Here’s what I started with! It’s so neat to me and I loved the color for it already! Happens that I had gotten it with still a nest inside. How cool is that to see!? So first I had to recruit Moo Moo to take out the two top nails for the front piece. (I tried to do it solo and it didn’t work out well… ) The back of the hammer trick only worked partially on one side. A little bit of some plier wiggling and out it came! Ta Da!! 1 out. 1 more to go. The next one needed some more work. A little bit of wedging… Some aggressive wedging… Pliers…No go bro… So after about 15 minutes of that he got the saw out. Yay!!! Time to clean it out and paint! While I was cleaning it with the hose a lot of paint chipped off and I got this neato design on the back! I decided I would not be able to paint over this side. Too cool to paint over in my opinion…Time to paint! Paint process shots! 2 layers later and look at this baby!! Next steps are to fill the bird house with a little bit of moss. Just enough to cover the backing. Then instead of bamboo sticks I had tons of toilet paper rolls I slid and stuffed in there. Then I stapled all of the rolls together so they would stay nicely in place. Then I used a staple gun for the first time while stapling the small clear plastic “garden bowl” on top of the bird house. (I only got semi injured when part of it shot out a bopped me in the eye… Oye.)Fill with some more moss and get it just a little moist. Next add some succulents! Then add some more… I threw in some fun ones! It “should” fill in with the succulents as time goes on. So then ta da!! It’s all done!! Time to hang out with all my Milkweed babies and fill it with lady bugs!!